The news that the Grand Ceremony would be held in Ashburg should have been a death sentence. To any other man, it would have been. Hosting the Sterling Family and every puppet town in the region was like a lamb inviting a pack of starving wolves to dinner and offering to sharpen their teeth.
But Rayn wasn't a lamb. He was the butcher who had hijacked the slaughterhouse.
Standing on the balcony of the Dawinton Palace, Rayn felt the cold, biting wind of the coming winter. One month. Thirty fucking days until the most powerful figures in the territory descended upon his city to see if he was worth the crown he'd snatched or if they'd have to peel it off his corpse.
"They think they're coming to reclaim their glory," Rayn whispered, his eyes glowing a predatory crimson. "They think they're coming to put a stray dog in its place. Let them come. I need the guests... I need their fucking parts."
He turned away from the wind and sat on the floor of his chamber, his focus narrowing onto the Black Ring on his finger. This was his greatest asset and his most terrifying liability. He needed to refine the Gambler's Heart before the first Sterling carriage crossed his gates. If he didn't, Victor Sterling's Clock-Maker ability would see through his every move like a glass window.
He closed his eyes and pushed his consciousness into the ring.
The transition was instantaneous. Rayn's spirit manifested inside the spatial dimension of the ring. The air here was thin and tasted of stale Gnosis and iron.
He looked to the left. The Vault of Greed was a mountain that defied logic. It was a sea of gold coins, jewels as large as fists, and artifacts that pulsed with the light of a thousand trapped suns. This was the hoard Vespera's master had hidden away—a fortune that could buy a kingdom and still have enough left to build a second one.
Rayn's gaze drifted to the massive, ornate treasure chests at the summit. He felt a shiver of genuine primal fear. He had pulled the Black Ring and his bracelet from one of those boxes, and even at his current level, the sheer pressure emanating from the remaining sealed chests felt like a physical weight on his soul.
"Don't even think about it, boy," Silas's voice echoed in the void, sounding unusually grave. "Maybe there are things in those boxes that eat Sovereigns for breakfast. You're a Tier 7 brat playing with Tier 2 or 3 matches. Focus on the monster you've already let out of the cage."
Rayn grunted and turned his attention to the second room: The Chamber of Rot.
This was where he had stored the "trash." The corpses of the thugs, the assassins, and the various fools who had tried to kill him since he arrived in Ashburg. He noted with a cold satisfaction that the bodies hadn't aged a second. The spatial energy of the ring suspended time; the blood was still wet, the skin still supple, and the expressions of terror still fresh.
But as he scanned the pile of bodies, he saw something that made his lip curl.
In the darkest corner of the room, a creature was hunched over the corpse of the Thug Leader. It was a spindly, horrific thing with long, pitch-black hands that ended in serrated claws. It was feeding. Crunch. Rip. Slurp.
Rayn zoomed his consciousness closer. The creature was holding the man's severed head like a piece of fruit, its massive black hands digging into the skull to scoop out the brains. It didn't eat like an animal; it ate like a connoisseur, savoring the flavor of the man's final, terrified thoughts.
"So, you're the bitch I'm supposed to merge with," Rayn said.
Rayn snapped back to his physical body, his eyes flying open. He was drenched in cold sweat.
"Vespera!"
The door to his chamber creaked open immediately. Vespera stood there, her golden eyes narrowed in suspicion. "You look like you've seen a ghost, Rayn. Or did the ring finally decide to eat your soul?"
"I want to know how to refine that creature," Rayn said, his voice a lethal rasp. "It's eating the collection. It's hungry, and I don't intend to let it starve until it's part of me."
Vespera let out a sharp, mocking laugh. "Refine it? You? Rayn, you're a child playing with a Tier 6 deviant. That thing is a 'Gambler's Heart'—it is a manifestation of pure, unadulterated greed and chaos. You try to refine that at your current level, and it will hollow you out and use your skin as a coat."
Rayn's crimson eyes flared. He stood up, the air in the room dropping twenty degrees as his aura flared. "Vespera, I didn't ask for a lecture on the dangers. I asked how. If you don't want to tell me, I'll find someone who will."
Vespera's expression shifted. She saw the madness in his eyes—the same bottomless, terrifying hunger for power that she had seen in the masters of old. She sighed, her vertical pupils flickering.
"If you want to die that badly, go talk to it," she hissed. "Project your consciousness into the ring. Your spirit can manifest there. Because you are the master of the ring, it cannot physically destroy your soul, though it will try to break your mind. Ask the creature. It knows the ritual better than anyone."
"She's right, boy," Silas's voice rumbled in Rayn's head, sounding more intrigued than worried. "When I was your age, I refined a beast ten times more terrifying than that paper-faced ghost. But the process... hmph. It was a bloodbath. I had to slaughter three thousand people and feed the beast their living hearts while they were still screaming. The 'Fear' of the dying is the seasoning that allows the Gnosis to bond. If you want to walk the Path of the Conqueror, your hands are going to get very, very red."
Rayn smiled. A dark, jagged thing. "Fear is the only currency I have in abundance."
Rayn closed his eyes and dived.
Rayn manifested in the Chamber of Rot, standing directly in front of the creature.
Up close, the Gambler's Heart was a nightmare given form. Its face was a flat, feature-less white mask with two bulging yellow eyes that leaked a black, oily substance. It sensed his presence and immediately dropped the half-eaten head it was clutching.
With a roar that sounded like a thousand dying screams, it lunged. Its black claws tore through Rayn's chest, but he didn't flinch. His spirit-body simply dissipated into smoke and reformed three feet away.
"Is that all you've got, 'lady'?" Rayn mocked.
The creature shrieked and attacked again. For four straight hours, it tried to shred him. It bit, it clawed, and it tried to drown him in its aura of despair. Rayn stood his ground, watching with cold, bored eyes as the spirit exhausted its spiritual energy. Eventually, the monster collapsed onto the floor, its white mask-face heaving with fatigue.
Rayn walked over and sat cross-legged in front of it. He reached out and, with a mocking gentleness, began to rub his hand against the creature's head, much like one would pet a mangy dog.
The monster shivered. For a brief second, a flicker of a memory—a woman's face, a soft lullaby—flashed through its yellow eyes. A single, black tear rolled down the mask, but it was instantly consumed by the hatred in its heart.
"Get your filthy hands off me, you monster!" the creature hissed. Her voice was a feminine rasp, cold and ancient. "I am not the beast here. You are. I see the darkness in you, Rayn. You're more hollow than I am."
"Call me whatever you want, as long as you give me the ritual," Rayn replied. "What is your name?"
The creature stayed silent for a long beat. "Morana."
Morana. Your name represents of Death and Illness. Rayn smiled. "Fitting. Now, Morana, tell me how to refine you. I want your power, and I know you want a seat at the table of the living."
Morana looked up, her yellow eyes widening into a demonic, jagged grin. "You want the power of the Gambler? You want to see the threads of fate? Then pay the price of the Butcher."
She leaned in, her breath smelling of rot and Gnosis. "I want a feast, little King. I want one hundred women's hearts, torn from their chests while they still beat. I want two hundred men's brains and hearts. And I want fifty gallons of blood—not from the bodies you give me, but fifty gallons of mixed blood from a thousand different souls. Feed me, and I will show you how to become a Gambler. Fail, and I will eat you from the inside out."
As Rayn attempted to speak, his consciousness was abruptly jerked back into his physical body, causing him to black out within the space of the black ring. When he came to, the weight of the refinement process hit him; it was far more grueling than he had anticipated.
He now faced a daunting list of requirements: one hundred women, the brains and hearts of two hundred men, and the unique blood of fifty different Gallions. While Rayn possessed infinite wealth, he realized these were "ingredients" that money alone could not buy.
A chilling smile tugged at Rayn's lips as the solution crystallized. He knew precisely where to find the "livestock" for his refinement—places where lives were a cheap currency. He immediately reached out to Vespera and the new leader of Division 1, the successor chosen after Victus had been hauled away to prison.
They arrived. Rayn started to explain his plan to collect those hearts, Brains and Blood of People.